MECHANICAL LEARNING
What is mechanical learning?
A machine is any system of objects interacting via cause and effect
across a space time distance.
Mechanical learning is any learning that takes place when one
object B receives an effect from another object A separated from B by a
space/time distance.
In the absence of B receiving an effect from A there is no learning
possible about A, so we can conclude that the only way that B can learn
about A is if A has some effect on B.
That effect IS the learning that B has of A. From that effect B
will then *INFER* other things about A.
This is called inferential learning.
It is also called:
Learning by being an effect rather than learning by being a cause.
Learning by looking at effects rather than learning by looking at
causes directly.
Learning by looking at symbols rather than learning by looking at
referents.
In the above case B is trying to learn about A by receiving an
effect in itself from A.
A is the original referent, and the change in the state of B is a
symbol once removed from A.
B thinks:
"Well since I am receiving photons of 5000 angstroms from A, A must
be painted red."
All machanical learning is inferential learning, and all
inferential learning is mechanical learning.
Of course B can't know that the photons are coming from A, God
could be arbitrarily injecting them into the space time stream just to
annoy B, or B's equipment could be broken, thinking it is seeing
photon's when it isn't, or thinking it is seeing 5000 Angstrom photon's
when they are in fact 50 Angstrom photons.
Another thing to notice, once the photon's reach B, A could be
completely gone, because it takes TIME for that causal messenger wave
carrying information about A to get to B. In fact, even if A is 'still
there', the original A that emitted the photon at B *IS* gone, to be
replaced by another A slightly later in time by the time B gets that
photon.
So B is never at any time in direct contact with A, the original
referent, but only in contact with effects in itself allegedly emmanated
by A in the past.
Present time B can never know about present time A across a non
zero space time distance.
The best B can do is know about a past time A across a space time
distance, and that knowing is very indirect because B has no direct
contact with A but only contact with itself and the changes in itself
allegedly caused by A.
So at best B can receive an effect and infer it is from A, but
attaining certainty that it came from A or what the true nature of A is,
is fact certainly impossible.
Mechanical or inferential learning can never produce a perfect
certainty, but only a theory, a probability, a good bet about the nature
of A.
100 percent certainty is not just another higher kind of
probability.
100 percent certainty is not merely a quantitative step away from
99 percent probability, it is an *INFINITE* unbridgeable QUALITATIVE
step away from 99 percent probability.
100 percent certainty and 99 percent probability are not even the
same order of thing.
100 percent certainty isn't even on the scale of what mechanical
learning can produce.
100 percent certainty is certainty of TRUTH.
99 percent probability is probability of dependable followingness,
it has nothing to do at all with truth. One's theories can work very
well most of the time and be completely wrong.
The scientific reasons for these things are a bit steep and will
take some thought.
Mechanical learning takes place in B, by B changing state, as an
alleged result of A.
But, B's present state does not imply a change in state, i.e. a
different prior state.
There is nothing in your present state that proves you were in a
different prior state. So after B has changed state, it can't know that
it has changed state!
After B has changed state, all B has is its (allegedly new) present
state, which state does not contain the information that it was in a
different prior state.
There is no possible state in B that absolutely guarantees that B
has changed state, i.e. was in a prior different state.
Thus B can never know it has changed state for sure, and thus can
never prove there is change or time for sure. It B can't prove that it
has changed state it certainly can not prove that it received an effect
from A!
Even if B had a 'picture' of its prior state, and compared it to
its present state and they 'looked' different, any part of B's circuitry
could be misbehaving to make either the memory picture wrong or the
comparison process wrong.
Mechanical 'memory' and human memory are both fallible for the
exact same reason, anything at all can get in there and mess up the
recording and leave behind no trace that it has.
Now this is diffcult but very important.
Suppose we build the following simple machine.
The machine has two bits, either bit can be zero or one at any
time.
Bit 2 will be used as a memory picture of bit 1.
Bit 1 is a bi stable flip flop. Everytime a photon hits it, if it
was 0 it changes to a 1, and if it was 1, it changes to a 0. Once the
flip flop has changed state it locks in its new state until freed by the
machine to change again when the next photon comes in. Photons that
come in during the locked period are ignored.
Every second the machine does the following:
1.) It compares bit 2 and bit 1, if they are same it does nothing
and sleeps until the next second.
2.) If the two bits are different, the machine prints 'DIFFERENT'
on a paper printer, then it copies bit 1 over to bit 2 so they are the
same again. The machine then unlocks bit 1 so it is free to change
again and goes back to sleep for another second.
Bit 1 is open to the environment to receive influences and causal
waves that might hit it. Every time a cause wave hits it, bit 1 changes
from 0 to 1 or from 1 to 0, unless of course it is locked from having
already been hit once, and not yet unlocked.
Bit 2 is heavily protected against the environment, it is used as
the the 'memory' of bit 1. We don't want ANYTHING to change bit 2
except the copy operation from bit 1 every time bit one changes state.
Say both bit 2 and bit 1 are zero and the machine is sitting there
'listening' with bit 1 open to the universe.
A photon comes in and hits bit 1 changing it from zero to 1.
A short while later the machine wakes up and compares bit 1 to bit
2 and sees that they are different. The machines prints 'DIFFERENT' on
the paper, copies bit 1 over to bit 2 so both are now 1, unlocks bit 1
and goes back to sleep.
So every time bit 1 changes, a second or so later this is shown on
the paper by the printed line.
During this experiment you get to build the machine and test it out
originally, but once the experiment is going, you only get to observe
what is printed on the paper, and not what is happening to bit 1.
Now let's ask some questions.
Can we be absolutely perfectly 100 percent certain that every time
the word DIFFERENT was printed on the paper that bit one had actually
changed state?
Can we be absolutely perfectly 100 percent certain that all the
times the word was NOT printed on the paper that bit 1 had not changed
state anyhow?
Would you be willing to bet your ETERNITY IN HELL that the paper
record matched the changes in bit 1 *PERFECTLY*.
Can you think of ANY circuitry (chain of cause and effect) that
would make the correlation between the paper output and bit 1 to be 100
percent certain?
Well more of the same produces more of the same, no matter how many
circuits you add, or how complex you make the machine, it is always
learning by being an effect, by cause and effect sequences that in the
end only follow each other *THEORETICALLY* and not certainly. So no
machine can ever produce absolute certainty.
If B trusts its own circuitry, then B may conclude that it has
changed state and get on with theorizing about A.
But its only trust, there is no absolute way for B to know for
certain that it really has changed state because state does not prove
prior change in state.
Since B can't know if it changed state, how can it know it received
an effect from A? No certainty of receiving an effect means no
certainty that A exists at all, let alone that it emmanted the effect in
the first place.
So we put a guy in a tank with the TV set connected to the outside
video camera. Can the guy be absolutely certain that what he sees on
the TV set is actually out there feeding photons to the video camaer?
No of course not, any part of the circuitry could be bad, firing when it
isn't supposed to, or not firing when it is.
Can the guy put MORE video cameras on the outside and the inside so
that the circuity can look at itself and compare itself against known
circuit diagrams of how its all supposed to look, in order to verify
with absolute certainty that nothing has been changed, altered or is non
functional?
This is called the self verifying machine problem.
It's a deep problem in mechanics and although putting in redundant
self monitoring circuitry will decrease the probability of a malfunction
from going unnoticed, it can be proven mathematically that perfect
certainty of circuit integrity is impossible, no matter how many video
cameras you have checking other video cameras.
Pefect mechanical self awareness is impossible.
Beyond reasonable doubt is a practical issue of dependable
followingness, are we willing to bet on it if we have to, it has nothing
to do with perfect certainty.
Notice this all arises because everything is trying to learn about
other things by looking at itself. You can never learn with certainty
about A by looking at B even if you ARE B.
Let's say this again.
Mechanical learning means learning about A by being B and looking
at B.
B can never prove A because of the third party law.
The third party law states that if B follows A, then either A may
have caused B to follow, or some third party C caused both A and B to
happen in such a way that they look like they caused each other to
happen.
A movie projector is a third party to a movie picture of a ball
bouncing off a wall. In the case of a movie, there is no cause between
the ball and wall, even though it looks like there is.
Thus mechanical learning can never produce an absolute certainty.
The video cameras that are looking at the other video cameras are
actually looking at effects in THEMSELVES to determine the states of the
other video cameras they are worried about. Thus they are looking at a
different object (themselves) in order to learn about the other cameras.
Consciousness on the other hand can produce a perfect certainty,
The following experiment depends on how conscious you are. Those
that aren't very conscious won't be able to do the experiment properly.
Mockup two different colored squares and put them 3 feet in front
of you.
Verify that you did so and THAT THEY ARE TWO DIFFERENT COLORS.
Do you see the perfect certainty?
Find two different colored objects and put them in front of you and
close your eyes.
Now open your eyes and ask 'Are two different colors still there?'
See the two different colors.
Verify over and over again that the answer is "Yes I see two
different colors FOR SURE, no way I can be wrong, this is not a theory,
this is not an inference, I am in direct contact with the original
referent (my conscious picture) right there in front of my nose."
You are learning about them by being in direct contact with THEM,
not by looking at some change in state in yourself the looker and
inferring back that the looked-at must THEREFORE be different.
This ability to learn by looking directly at the cause can only
take place if there is no space or time between the looker and the
looked-at.
Space and time separating two objects makes them TWO DIFFERENT
OBJECTS, and then we are back to being one of them and trying to learn
about the other by looking at changes in ourselves. That's mechanical
learning.
Space/time -> TWO DIFFERENT OBJECTS -> MECHANICAL LEARNING
But when we see the two different colored mockups, we are looking
AT THEM, directly, something a machanical system can not do.
Certainty of our own mockups thus implies an absence of space/time
between the looker and the looked-at, no matter how much the mockups
look like they are OUT THERE, they aren't.
Within consciousness at least, space/time is an illusion.
If they were out there, you wouldn't be able to see them at all.
You would only be able to infer they might be there from some
effect you saw in yourself, and by the time the effect got to you, the
cause of the effect out there might have gone away completely so all you
could ever glean was an inference about the past.
Since you can actually SEE the mockups out there, and you KNOW THEY
ARE RIGHT THERE RIGHT NOW, that means not only is there no space between
the looker and the looked at, but also no time, the seeing is
instantaneous, consciousness is always seeing itself in absolute present
time.
No machine can do that.
No machine can use any part of its circuity to inspect any other
part of its circuitry and observe its state as it is in present time.
The inspecting circuitry can only see a past rendering, rendition of,
the inspected circuitry, never the thing itself, and never as it is now.
Thus in an absence of space/time between looker and looked-at, we
must conclude that consciousness is a zero dimensional scalar operating
actuality, and that the process of perfect certainty is one where cause
and effect are the same event, i.e the learner and the learned about,
are all one and the same event.
Mechanical learning always implies two events, the learned about
out there emitting a causal messenger wave towards the learner, and then
*LATER* somewhere *DISTANT* the learner receiving the messenger wave,
changing state, trusting that it has changed state, and then infering by
deduction that because it has changed state here and all effects are
caused, that there must have been a cause out there.
That's not the process of seeing a mockup and learning the mockup
has two different colors.
Intensive and honest study of how a machine with video cameras for
eyes learns that an external object has two different colors, and how a
conscious unit learns that two of its mockups has two different colors,
will go a long ways to clarifying the point that learning in
consciousness is *QUALITATIVELY DIFFERENT* than mechanical learning, and
can produce a perfect certainty where mechanical learning can not.
Ramifications on the zero dimensional scalar nature of
consciousness can then be drawn, with further study directed at how one
might interface a zero dimensional consciousness with a 4 dimensional
brain. (3 space and 1 time).
This material is weirder than Special Relativity, don't expect to
get it in a day.
Homer
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Homer Wilson Smith The Paths of Lovers Art Matrix - Lightlink
(607) 277-0959 KC2ITF Cross Internet Access, Ithaca NY
homer@lightlink.com In the Line of Duty http://www.lightlink.com
Sun Jan 1 20:41:01 EST 2006